There Were Fifty Of Us

...Ending Cryo-homiostasus...

...placing intro vanis component...

...Injecting adenosine...

...Injecting Histamine...

...Injecting trimethylxanthine...

...Heating...

...open...

... complete...

    My first breath of air is a gasp. It feels like I am being born all over again. The air is cool and stale; on its wisps, it has the familiar metallic stabs that stars collect. The next breath is more controlled. It had to be the training that commanded me to stay calm and look around. 

    "Dammit," I whisper to myself, even though I know no one else is around. 

    We were still in space; it is as beautiful as I remember, but it is space. The excitement of weightlessness wore off after the first couple of months. Now, it is just another thing that reminds me of home. For a moment, I let my mind create pictures of grass and tree roots grazing the bottoms of my feet. I would give anything to be able to feel that again. Space seems like the most exciting thing when you're not in it. Looking up at all these stars, following the glowing planets from the safety of land with ozone. 

    The grass is always greener on the other side. It was greener for a couple of months, seeing everything I've followed all my life up close was cool, but now I just miss everything.

    Behind me is my sleeping pod; it has my name and number—my entire self boiled down into a list of nine numbers—and my name. Shield manager Edward Waheed, #934628167. There were still some ice crystals clinging to the corners of the open lid that just a second ago, I was trying to look out from. It still has smoke coming from it, vaporizing the last bits of solidified nitrogen. 

    The ship's hallway is long and filled with blinking lights that connect to tubes, which connect to more lights. There are rows and rows of little pods with people. People that I had met in the training camp back when we were at the Colosseum. When I thought this was all so important, I remember when we were getting ready to leave, the whole crew smiling together like little kids on picture day. Not knowing in the slightest what we were getting into. There are fifty of us; I know the exact number because every time I wake up, I count all fifty. So I count, and again, theirs fifty, including me.

     Once I'm done, I float into the shower room. The water turns on immediately after the doors shut. The water felt explosive as it hit me from every side; the cold air brushes against me like sandpaper. A robotic hand put my space suit in front of me. Pulling it over the spines on my back is always uncomfortable. Having to wiggle each one into the right spot. The first time I ever put this suit on, I remember feeling so proud to be going all the way up here. I was excited to become an astronaut. Now, we just drift through what I want to call space, but it's everything but space. As a kid, I dreamed about what nothing could look like, and when we launched off into this place, I still dreamed about it. Now I look out into the void, still seeing thousands of stars out there just out of reach, except I found nothingness. It is hidden in the ink of space. It's in between the folds of atoms that are all around me. 

    The doors opened right as I got my last spine at the bottom of my spine into its tiny pocket. It is always the hardest one because my fingers could never find it. Right in front of me is a black metal. It had been scrapped from many rotations and is about to get more of them. 

    The spinning stops, and I float into the shield room and into my chair, wiggling my weightless body on top of the velcro seat with its arms. There were no rolling capabilities in it, which always disappointed me. I start checking all the shields. 

...Sheild one activated...

...Sheild two activated...

...Sheild three inactive...

    I sighed at the red screen like it would magically make it disappear, but it kept blinking instead. All I want to do is return to my sleeping pod, yet the thought of being frozen again made me sick. The indecision builds in me, making me restless. I tap the screen, and it shoots up into a shield hologram. I flipped the ship around to its left side, and like I thought, the generator had just randomly shut down. I start typing to get it to reboot until an orange light flicks on. 

    As I typed, it hardly crossed my mind; orange is barely a warning of debris approaching us. We could pass by it. Then curiosity made my eye blink over to it. Right then, it turns yellow. What if I just let it hit us. The thought flashes over me like lightning from a star cloud. The idea stands in front of my mind for a moment. Like the shadows at the edge of our eyes, it disappears. I hiccup at the thought and continue typing. 

    When I was down on land, I remember people protesting against the launch, saying things about us, yelling that we were going to hurt whatever living creatures we meet on the next planet to get what the Republic wanted. I always brushed it off. Until this one day at the Colosseum. I was walking past the other protection soldiers. On their holo-board, I saw a gun and bombs. I thought they were just defense at the time, but I don't know what they were for now. 

    The thought crept back into my mind, and the yellow light started to beeping, yelling at me to pull up the shields because we were on a collision course. 

    My fingers stop right before I can hit enter and restart the generator. What if I just sit back. 

    Every time I got to wake up, things were less glamorous, and the rest of the crew, I know at least one other person, agreed. Once, I saw a small piece of paper sticking out of the couch. It said that Paul had been leaving these messages to try to talk to people, but he was never getting any responses even though he had agreed with Sindy that they would-

    The puzzle pieces clicked together in my head like two colliding stars. I got up and ran into the rotating room. It sprays me down and spins me around to the sleeping hall. Dripping wet, I shot down the hall to her pod. I hammered my fist into the glass until it shattered. An alarm blares in my ears, and she falls in my arms. I place my fingers on her chin and neck, checking for a heartbeat. 

    The thought drops, and everything sinks away from me. Nothing else matters, nothing else ever mattered, not more than this. I wait for her heart until an alarm in my room blasts, and the two other shield managers float out of their pods dead. 

    I looked out the window and saw the comet coming closer and closer to us. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen: blue, red, and green fire sparks out into nothingness. I smiled for the first time in however long I had been on this ship. I finally got to touch a star.